Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Mourning Elmwood's Jim Gifford: 'An innocent person, in so many ways'

2013-09-26-sdc-giffordgrave (1).JPG

The family of Jim Gifford, victim of a lethal attack in Elmwood, has saved a plot for him near his mother, Alice Christ Gifford, at Crown Hill Memorial Park Cemetery in Clinton. At the grave site Friday are three of Gifford's cousins: Lois Scholl, Joanne Berie and Tim Clarey.
(Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com)

Maybe six years ago, Tim Clarey decided it was time to call his Syracuse cousin, Jim Gifford. The family plot in Clinton's Crown Hill cemetery was beginning to fill up, and Clarey, of Oneida County, wanted to make sure that Gifford still intended to be buried there.

They hadn't spoken for years. By telephone, Gifford told Clarey he liked the idea of returning to Crown Hill, where he could finally be reunited with the mother he lost when he was four.

Both men assumed they wouldn't discuss it again for a long time. When Clarey called, Gifford was in his early 60s, a retiree devoted to his Syracuse neighborhood, and he was hardly preoccupied with thinking about his funeral arrangements.

Gifford took long walks. He loved his church. He wrote letters to old friends who'd touched his life. Last Saturday morning, he woke up early in the South Avenue apartment that had been his home for almost 30 years, and he went down the hill to a nearby 7-Eleven, where he was a familiar customer.

At the store, he bought a soda, some doughnuts, a newspaper and a can of soup. It was a quiet of time of day, when the city is typically at peace. Gifford walked outside. At 6:08 a.m., in the store parking lot, he was attacked by 18-year-old Romeo Williams, according to investigators.

Prosecutors say a grand jury will consider homicide charges against Williams, who struck Gifford with his fists, knocked him to the ground, repeatedly kicked the 70-year-old man in the head - and then celebrated for a group of friends, police said.

Almost a week later, those who loved Gifford can barely speak of it.

Family photo: Jim Gifford as a young man, probably in the early 1960s; his mother's tombstone is in the background.Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com

"This was an innocent person, in so many ways," said the Rev. Jeanne Radak, former pastor of Elmwood Presbyterian Church. "I still have trouble getting the image out of my head that the last thing he knew on this Earth was someone beating him, that the last thing he felt was pain and helplessness."

He hurt no one, she said. He was gentle and trusting. In that sense, his friends say, he was utterly defenseless.

In his church, Gifford had been an elder, a worship leader and a food pantry volunteer. For almost 40 years, until his 2002 retirement, he hand-delivered internal mail to different departments at the Van Duyn Home & Hospital.

At home, he was the epitome of a city resident: Gifford, who didn't drive a car, built his life around a job, church and businesses within a short walk of his apartment.

That included the 7-Eleven, formerly a Wilson Farms.

"He was pretty much by himself, but I would say he was an alone man, not a lonely man," said Ray Schumacher, 91, a retired Van Duyn administrator and a longtime friend.

While Gifford was a bachelor, without children, he spent a lifetime building deep connections. "A hardworking, lovely person," said Beth Kendrick, a Van Duyn colleague who said Gifford managed to do his job and to find time for unhurried, earnest conversations.

Erla Pearson, who worked with him at Van Duyn, remembers how efficiently Gifford made sure each office got its daily mail. He was the kind of employee, she said, whose duties might be easily forgotten or overlooked.

Gifford brought great diligence to a critical responsibility, Pearson said. On his days off, people missed him. Van Duyn did not feel whole.

Julie DiBagio, a retired nursing director, said the staff adopted a yellow Labrador retriever they called "Zack." The puppy grew up in the hospital, and Gifford took it upon himself to care for Zack. He looked for the dog as soon as he arrived at work, and Pearson said Zack was soon joining Gifford on his rounds.

Years later, when DiBagio retired, she brought the dog to her home. "He'd drop me a line," she said about Gifford, but she knew he was really checking up on Zack.

Jim Gifford, about 10 years ago, in his role as a worship leader at Elmwood Presbyterian Church.Courtesy of the Rev. Jeanne Radak

Gifford's early life was intertwined with loss. His mother, Alice Christ Gifford, was a nurse. His father, Bart, spent a career with the old Smith-Corona typewriter company. Alice gave birth to her only child in her late 30s, after her heart had already been weakened by scarlet fever, said Lois Scholl, a cousin.

For a few years, her health failing, Alice and her little boy lived with Gifford's grandparents, farmers in Clark Mills. Scholl and a cousin, Joanne Berie, have vivid memories of Gifford: How he'd take long walks and play in a nearby stream. How he always shared his ice cream with the family Collie. How he would hurry outside each day at the exact moment that a train would roar past, on the tracks behind the house.

In 1947, after Alice died, the boy rejoined his father, who eventually remarried and had two other children, Ray and Linda, with his second wife. Gifford graduated from North Syracuse High School in 1961, three years before he was hired by Van Duyn. By the early 1970s, he'd moved to Elmwood, down the hill from the hospital.

When he needed to travel, he traveled by foot.

"It drives me crazy when I see these headlines that call him 'elderly,'" DiBagio said. "He never acted elderly. He walked everywhere he went."

His life was in Syracuse, although his cousins say he'd occasionally take a bus ride out to see them - and they always made a point of keeping a plot for him near his mother, at Crown Hill, just in case he chose to use it.

Yet Gifford seemed destined for a long life. His 2002 retirement allowed him to spend even more time at Elmwood Presbyterian Church, where a small and loyal congregation gathers in a city landmark. Radak, pastor there until 2005, said he was "easygoing, the nicest guy," who rarely said a bad word about anyone.

Radak, now leader of the Presbytery of Newton, N.J., recalls how Gifford - a church elder - regularly volunteered at the Elmwood food pantry. When Radak offered classes on reading the Scripture, Gifford didn't miss one.

On Sunday mornings, he'd be waiting outside the church when she arrived. Once she unlocked the door, he'd fall into a familiar routine, turning on the lights and filling water glasses for anyone who was about to sing or preach.

Radak and the Rev. Joe Hinds, another former pastor, say Gifford would help deliver communion to shut-ins. At his church, in the same way as at Van Duyn, people noticed when he wasn't there. Hinds said any minister will tell you that some sermons are better than others, and there are days when your message seems to put the place to sleep.

"No matter how boring I was," said Hinds, his voice starting to crack, "I'd find his face (in the congregation) and he'd be smiling, like it was the greatest thing he'd ever heard."

In his small world, Jim Gifford brought that warmth to everyone he met.

Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. Email him at skirst@syracuse.com, write to him in care of The Post-Standard, 220 S. Warren St., Syracuse 13202, visit his blog at www.syracuse.com/kirst or send him a message on Facebook or Twitter.